A Certain Kind Of Treasure

While digging for treasure, two friends have a fight, which leads one of them into a mysterious friendship with an old woman from another world.

The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.

The first comprehensive history of magical treasure hunting from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, revealing a magical universe of treasure spirits, and wizards who tried to deal with them. Combining history and anthropology, this study sees treasure hunting as an expression of shifting economic mentalities and changing ideas about history.

Levi Montbard loves history and isn’t afraid to search it out no matter where it takes her. A scroll she acquires to sell in Montbard’s Antiquities in New Orleans leads Levi on an adventure that will take her from London to Morocco, by way of the Sahara Desert. A story of a female Templar Knight should sound like a hoax, but to Levi the new information rings true. Proving the scroll accurate becomes an obsession. She’ll stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Yasmine Hassani spends her days teaching female studies in Marrakech to women who want to leave a mark on their country. An arrogant Westerner storming into her office is highly unexpected and leaves Yasmine laughing off the absurdity of her claims. No one knows more about the history of the Templar Knights than Yasmine, and reluctantly intrigued, she agrees to help Levi. But their search turns down one dead end after another, almost as if someone is working hard to keep old secrets buried. They’ll have to fight the Catholic Church, centuries of tradition, and their growing attraction for each other to uncover the mystery of the female Templar Knight.

A mysterious library book opens the door to a world of magic and danger in the first book in the beloved Young Wizards series. Bullied by her classmates, Nita Callahan is miserable at school. So when she finds a mysterious book in the library that promises her the chance to become a wizard, she jumps at the opportunity to escape her unhappy reality. But taking the Wizard's Oath is no easy thing, and Nita soon finds herself paired with fellow wizard-in-training Kit Rodriguez on a dangerous mission. The only way to become a full wizard is to face the Lone Power, the being that created death and is the mortal enemy of all wizards. As Nita and Kit battle their way through a deadly alternate version of New York controlled by the Lone Power, they must rely on each other and their newfound wizarding skills to survive--and save the world from the Lone One's grasp.

And strange smells would arrive on the wind. So it seemed that there was some kind of magic in this field. Some said that there was a dragon underneath that had been woken by the lightning. Some said there was treasure down there too. Fracking. How far down do you own the land beneath your feet? How much does where you live inform the person you become? What happens when someone else comes along and stakes their claim? For young couple Bea and Joseph this is a story of fracture: of fractured hearts, lives and lands. This Land digs down through the history – and the future – of a patch of earth and everything that has and will happen there. This programme text edition was published to coincide with the play's premiere by Pentabus Theatre Company, Shropshire, in March 2016.

Can the Highlands survive a gifted soul with a tendency toward mischief? Leonce MacPherson became chieftain after a Norman slaughtered his father and clansmen. For two years he raided Northumbria seeking vengeance while a dream woman promises the return of his great sword, stolen in the massacre. After escaping an abusive father, Lady Hope Nevilles, unknowingly the Gifted MacKay of her generation, lived with animals for friends in wild Northumbria. She longs to flee to her mother's native Highlands and find a place away from capture and torture. Her father steals Leonce's son, Hope takes that as a sign to journey to the Highlands. She returns the boy and the great sword to Leonce, who recognizes her as his dream siren. Can he trick her into marriage? She vowed to kill herself rather than submit to any man. Can she learn to trust? Will her father's sin haunt her future? Will distrust and jealousy doom their fragile union?